Is it really possible to fully heal/recover with alters stil

I'll be honest, I sometimes think that the divisions between different disorders are kind of blurry anyway.

We've realized that most people can't tell the difference between us, especially when writing. But even talking there isn't a huge difference. What caught LJ was the differences in how we lisp and the slight shifts in accent, but most people don't notice.

Ultimately, I do think it's possible to heal, and yes, I agree with Dwelt that it will feel different after healing and integration, but that fusion isn't an absolute necessity and may actually be a detriment for certain systems.

Vi

Yeah, I feel like people put a lot of emphasis on differentiating the two, but at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter? I have yet to see research that differentiates the two disorders on a biological(?) level, and it's ultimately up to the clinician to decide whether or not you have DID or OSDD.
And I've seen a lot of harm that has come with how much people put emphasis on their differences as well; people see OSDD as a lesser form of DID. I've had people tell me that I might not have DID or that it doesn't seem like DID to them or that my experiences sounded more like OSDD. And it always frustrated me, but it frustrates me even now, knowing that my experiences are literally normal DID experiences, experiences that people would previously take as me having OSDD instead of DID.
It feels like another way to further divide people with a dissociative trauma disorder.

For us we have to fight to avoid fusion. Court stuff meant all is big have had to lower our walls and look at each others trauma. We all regret doing this and sincerely hope we can bring walls back up when this is over. The only trauma we don't have access to is peters. He is our architect and any time we try to access it he literally turns the inner world against us the entirety of our inner landscape will become hostile to prevent us going there.

Thing is he is probably the most defined of us still.

We periodically feel week, insubstantial. Like one of us will try to hold front for a perticular activity but find our selves fuzzy and all of a sudden someone else is left holding the can.

We have been able to solidify by voluntarily minding our own business. We call it "closed line" if an alter declares closed line noone else is allowed to touch that memory.

Dwelt wrote:
The last two don't plan to merge at all. We really don't want to. We like the way we are right now, as a "spectrum", and we kind of have a strong attachment to each other. Since the very beginning, we knew/hoped we would be the two "remaining" alters.
.

When I age slide to adult and age of body I can see all the others as 'past me' too. We will reduce to 3 as we're The TriForce.

Jay - will head the category representing all 'social mask hosts' over the lifetime that is they whose job it is to deal with people in the outside daily life. They are like the Front Desk PA (Personal Assistant) for our system. It will consist of all those who identity with the original given birth name too. One day LS, Teen S and Sioux will be one.

Kit and I (adult 'Bobby') blended are the 'core self' but we blend by choice so we can also be free to live inside separately and age slide if we wish to. Due to our nature we NEED the inner world to be able to function AT ALL, but that does not mean we have no say in how we live in the outside world.

The last separate category to make up the Tri are the changelings who will remain inside as a Tribe with our Spirit Guardian 'Juno' being the Queen. No matter what the bodies age gets to the Changeling will remain like a protected tribe in a secret rainforest (in the inner world).

Adult Bobby!

I will say that this has been a fascinating conversation.

Something I noticed but hadn't really thought about, but thanks to Eliseahorse I considered is the idea that there are hard delineations between alter's memories. The difference between 'knowing' and 'remembering. Like I know 'X' happened, but I don't remember it happening. Sometimes the memories bleed through if someone is close to the surface but only if triggered by something. I suspect that this is to guarantee functionality as even healed these memories are overwhelming, and healing doesn't necessarily get rid of sensitivity to what triggers the memories.

Take care,
Vi

ViTheta wrote:

The difference between 'knowing' and 'remembering. Like I know 'X' happened, but I don't remember it happening. Sometimes the memories bleed through if someone is close to the surface but only if triggered by something. I suspect that this is to guarantee functionality as even healed these memories are overwhelming, and healing doesn't necessarily get rid of sensitivity to what triggers the memories.

Take care,
Vi

Yeah... I was so exhausted yesterday I crashed after the guy had gone and needed to lie down..I felt what I thought was Kit sliding in but can't remember anything else of the evening. It seems its difficult to distinguish between Kit and Bobby when Bobby comes out in adult form.

I see they came on here! ..and probably watched TV but I don't have any images or memory of anything else.

Sometimes if I've been inside for the weekend when I come back upfront I get an image of what they've been doing like if I look towards the switch dock I'll see an image of the game that was played at the weekend like a flashback, I'll know they did pizza or had a curry and where they went with the dog, but won't get a running commentary of every second of the weekend. So I'll' know what they did as a fact but 'my memory' will be of what I did on the inside that weekend...usually hanging out with others on the farm or going on holosuite program.

Of course if I was out here all weekend then my memory will be of the whole weekend out here, but usually Bobby and Kit like the weekends and evenings and I do the weekdays to deal with appointments and interactions. I don't think this will change but I'm glad they are happy with my 'work' as their PA!!!

Jay

ethanthealien wrote:I have yet to see research that differentiates the two disorders on a biological(?) level, and it's ultimately up to the clinician to decide whether or not you have DID or OSDD.

Apparently there is a correlation between the intensity of the dissociative symptoms and what's going on in the "corpus callosum": the more damaged it is, the higher the intensity of the symptoms.

But all trauma-related dissociation symptoms are on a gradient rather than in neat, separated boxes so when all is said and done, given that the causes are the same and the treatment is the same, DID or OSDD it's Twiddledee/Twiddledum.

Regarding what identities remain, I just tend to go with the flow. I like to learn to love all of the "me" and I also like to be them and in the same time I also love the feeling of being whole and "all of the me together". If there is a total fusion it would not be exactly the same as being integrated but not fully fused.

But well. My brain will do what is best for me and I just need to sit in the car and enjoy the view as I follow up with therapy.

ArbreMonde wrote:
Apparently there is a correlation between the intensity of the dissociative symptoms and what's going on in the "corpus callosum": the more damaged it is, the higher the intensity of the symptoms.

Kit found this on link to corpus callosum and Autism..Could this be why there seems to be an high incidence of autistic people within the DID community?

https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/138/7/2046/254341


You can also have a stroke in that region

" the corpus callosum plays a major role in coordinating movement and processing sensory information between the two hemispheres of the brain. It’s also suggested to play an important role in cognitive functions such as memory and planning"

Depending on which part of the corpus callosum is affected, various functions can be altered. Many consequences caused by corpus callosum strokes are related to difficulties coordinating and processing sensory information between both sides of the brain"

(Quoted from: https://www.flintrehab.com/corpus-callosum-stroke/)


Could this in theory prevent a person who had both to be able to fuse fully and mean alters stayed as seperate individuals with different memories and abilities when fronting?

Kit
(and 'secretary Jay' typing! )

Autistic and DID comorbidities have been studied and here is a link to a nice litterature review about the subject. Apparently it has more to do with the autistic brain's tendency to dissociate in order to manage the intense sensory and emotional input rather than something to do with corpus callosum.

-> https://did-research.org/comorbid/devel ... -disorders

__

Regarding the "final fusion or not" it really depends on a case-by-case way of how the brain/system best manages things. Apparently autistic individuals heal better and faster due to their hypersensitivities: they are more exposed to daily stressors therefore they have way, way many more occasions to apply integration tools (to the opposite of a less hypersensitive person who will absolutely need to see a therapist in order to work through stressors because everyday life does not provide enough minor stressors, only the big triggers).

Sources on that I think I heard about in a conference summary somewhere, I'll see if I can find it again or if somebody remembers a conference about this?

ArbreMonde wrote:. Apparently autistic individuals heal better and faster due to their hypersensitivities: they are more exposed to daily stressors therefore they have way, way many more occasions to apply integration tools (to the opposite of a less hypersensitive person who will absolutely need to see a therapist in order to work through stressors because everyday life does not provide enough minor stressors, only the big triggers)

I've wondered if this is why we function a lot better than some of the systems we've run into and talked to. We've had to learn to work together in order to function. While we're certain that our second T knew about the DID and may have set us on the path to better functionality, we're also aware that our system has had to deal with the wider issues of how overwhelming just shopping it.

Though we have discovered that it's harder to work across subsystem divides than within our own subsystem.

It's also why we're really not sure about fusion because the different alters function differently and can handle different aspects of hypersenitivity. It sometimes feels like different alters rewire the brain for different functionalities. I know that people talk about 'masking' and how ND people mask. I wonder if in a lot of autistic people those masks end up going a few steps beyond and become more and more separate alters.

Take care
Vi